Various - specific class recommendations---------------------------------------------------------------------------Ranger - I think this is subsumed by the druid class I've proposed, and that the proposed druid will be a more distinctive/different class than ranger is likely to be.

Druid - My idea of druid is a bit different from other people's idea of druid. I currently plan to put the ranger skills there, and build new spell/skill sets for Sky, Earth, and Water spell trees. Animal lore and handling should also go here. Note that my druid is a bit less reliant on godly power than some of you are used to. Some druid spells and skills may be unusable by evil characters, but I expect this to only be a small number of the total.

Necromancer - Curses, but other than that mostly new skill trees. Some skills and spells unusable by good characters.

Bard - In general, the idea of music being a trigger for magic really irks me for some reason I don't entirely understand. Shadowfax has one of the best possible bard class suggestions I've seen though, one based primarily around charisma that doesn't necessarily have magical powers through music. I'm concerned that this class would be difficult to balance without giving it ridiculous powers. Void also has some good ideas about bards that don't offend my sensibilities.

Splitting mage into wizard/sorcerer - I'll think about this as well, as mentioned previously I really don't have a good handle on what to do with mage related breakage.

Illusionist - I have a hard time reconciling the name with enough power to make it a balancable class. Interesting skills though, some of which might be usable elsewhere.

Craftsman/artisan/merchant/scribe/enchanter - I don't think these are big enough to support a full fledged class, and I think most of them could be placed elsewhere. I would like to get a reasonable crafting system put into the game, possibly distributed between the classes so that powerful objects may have to pass through several hands to be completed.

I have played other games where cross-class crafting is in place and it works out pretty well. For instance, in Kingdom of Loathing, the pastamancer can summon noodles (yes its weird, but the whole game is weird) and the sauceror can summon reagants to make sauces. As far as item creation, I'm stuck. I would think of limiting the armors and such to only being ac based. Effects and such should be in the domain of builder-gods.

Now Bard being chr based and not magic based is a novel and I think a great idea. Chr is generally underused as a tool until the player basically has no other stats/skills to buy. A lot of influence based spells/skills could go here. In fact, instruments could have modifiers to bard spells. I imagine a drum being a tool to provide morale and combat boost, a harp could give a bonus to the 'calm tree', etc. I'm not sure any of these affects would be castable(?) in battle, and probably a different sort of metric other than mana would be needed. Perhaps move and CHR could combine to form a music point or something. I dunno, I'm not too confident on that idea.

This post is in two parts, the first being my worldview and a little about how new classes would fit into it, the second explaining how all the classes fit into it. The posts are worded as if I were directly addressing Dentin, which I am:

How I've conceptualized magic in Alter Aeon and thus, how I build it.

I) Magic exists A) Magic is energy of some sort B) Magic is not constant -- it exists in differing concentrations from place to place. There also appears to be different types (dark "fae", solar "fae", earth "fae" note though I like those books I don't like the fact you're just copying off them )

II) Magic can be harnessed A) Magic can be shaped into virtually any other form of energy with minimal losses. i) Magic used to manipulate physical matter (such freezing ambient water to make ice bolts) does not necessarily make such matter magical. ii) "Conjured" matter, ie created seemingly ex nihlo via magic (like the flaming gasses from fireballs or electron streams of lightning bolt), is magical by nature and can be blocked by effects that affect magic. The conjured material quickly dissipates. B) Mortals can store magic in the form of mana. C) Some entities, definitely gods and possibly demon lords, fae princes, powerful angelic beings, etc, either produce magic intrinsically or can tap into it more effeciently than mortals. Such entities have virtually unlimited ability to use magic. Some creatures are made of magic or held together by magic.

III) Magic is harnessed into spells A) There currently seems to be two ways of doing so i) Direct shaping of stored magical energy (mana) through arcane formulae and personal will -- this is the method employed by mages ii) Channeling spells, ie an extrahuman entity is given mana by the caster via a ritual, shapes it either partially or completely into the required energy, then releases it back to the caster for them to direct as they see fit -- this is the method clerics seem to employ. (Extrahuman entity is not necessarily a god, as clerics do not have to worship a god if they choose not to) a) is this why clerics can groupcast? they just sacrifice mana via ritual and can do so by proxy?

IV) How would new casting classes fall under this methodology? A) Druids i) Do they use their own understanding and study, making them "nature mages" or "hedge wizards"? ii) Do they beseech nature deities/fae powers/nature spirits and act as an intermediary? If yes, they are clerics. B) Necromancers i) They could conceivably be mages that use "dark fae" or black mana or whatever we want to call it. I rather like this concept. See paragraph I, point B. a) are they more powerful at night? ii) If they call upon dark gods/patron demons/dark forces, then they are just evil clerics. C) Paladin i) These are warrior/clerics. See next post for more on this. a) Warriors are not soley barbarians -- they have tank, retreat, defensive fighting, unarmed combat and other skills a highly trained soldier would have. b) There would be too many shared skills between two melee classes: they would both kick, disarm, parry, double attack, etc. 1) splitting warrior would leave both new classes too skill anemic, unless there are a LOT of new paladin powers, which you don't seem to like.

I like the bard idea, maybe more of a secondary maybe even third class (fourth? fifth?) just for extra support to the character and his/her group.You could possibly make the warrior a purely damage dealer, and give tanking, retreat, so on to paladins, although I don't like this idea; it takes away too much power from warriors, in my opinion.I see the marit of draak's point that too much would overlap; I can't think of many new things, maybe I'm not original enough. The drewid class, as discussed in another thread, needs some kind of attack power, if only to hold it's own; as boa said, power is fun, and you can't have power if people or mobs can just wipe the floor with you.The necromansors could take several things from mage and clerics, maybe faerie fire/fog, lethargy, famin, so on.That's all I have for now.

I thought of another thing for necromancers, that they could take the 'body alteration' spell tree from mages.

Thematically it works -- necromancers would deal in life energy and adjusting and augmenting said energies would fit in. That leaves mages with the elemental damage and protection spells, illusionary spells (invisibility), travel spells (teleport/summon) and the detection/divination spells. Maybe give darken to necromancers, too.

Mechanically it works -- Dentin wants to nerf mages, this would accomplish that goal without seeming contrived and metagame.

The only spell that's iffy is stoneskin. It could become part of a spell tree with earthquake and end up on the cleric cast list. Or it can be rethemed as 'crystal skin' and made part of the elemental crystal tree. Or it could become 'boneskin' or somethink like that and be given to necromancers.

Could make a guild called the Druidic Society or somesuch, and make "druid" spells (which are cleric spells) accessible to guild members based on ranking.

Maybe need to make guild ranking into a quest reward, and have spells/skills with guild rank thresholds?Ranking would be numeric, with different levels (like rank 1-3 is Apprentice, 3-6 is Junior Member, etc) so you would have to do multiple quests to rack up ranking points in your guild. Quests could give out varible amounts of ranking points.

Following this pattern, we could make a viable Assassins' Guild (for thieves), the Order of Harmony (monastic/martial artist society for warriors), maybe Covens for mages and necromancers?

*******************Clerics should have more strongly aligned abilities, and a few abilities tied to their gods which they lose if they stop worshipping that god. This could make them far more varied and interesting.

An example:

Spell bless

Change so that it gives out -2 spellsave instead of just -1. It still gives hitroll based on level/favor.This is how it would work for worshippers of most gods.

disenchant -- necromancer spell, 75% effective against cleric, mage and necromancer spells. (You just try to bludgeon away magic, could have some unpleasant side effects)

Instead of this fairly cookie-cutter idea, I'd like to propose as a necromancer "dispel" style spell another idea:

leech spell - necromancer spell, when cast on a target, reduces the duration of target's active spells by some amount. Probably some sort of level check would be thrown against each spell individually. The necromancer gains hitpoints equal to <number of ticks reduced>/5.

A first-level necromancer spell idea:

soul serpent - creates an ethereal, serpent-like entity that assists the caster in combat. It does a low amount of damage (1dcaster's level, no damroll, hitroll equal to caster level, attacks equal to 20 + 1/2 caster level). The "serpent" lasts for a number of ticks equal to 10 + 1/2 the caster's level, or until it deals an amount of damage equal to the twice the caster's level + 20.

When the duration expires or the maximum damage is done, the serpent dissipates, and the caster regains a number of hitpoints equal to the amount of damage the serpent inflicted. If the soul serpent is dispelled, killed or otherwise destroyed, the caster gains no hitpoints.

----------------------------I would also like to point out that the bard would be a new group oriented class (like cleric and warrior), and necromancer would be a new solo oriented class (like mage and theif), though a necromancer's soloing ability would come from having conjured and created minions to assist him.

III) Magic is harnessed into spells A) There currently seems to be two ways of doing so i) Direct shaping of stored magical energy (mana) through arcane formulae and personal will -- this is the method employed by mages ii) Channeling spells, ie an extrahuman entity is given mana by the caster via a ritual, shapes it either partially or completely into the required energy, then releases it back to the caster for them to direct as they see fit -- this is the method clerics seem to employ. (Extrahuman entity is not necessarily a god, as clerics do not have to worship a god if they choose not to) a) is this why clerics can groupcast? they just sacrifice mana via ritual and can do so by proxy?

also:

Quote

B) Necromancers i) They could conceivably be mages that use "dark fae" or black mana or whatever we want to call it. I rather like this concept. See paragraph I, point B. a) are they more powerful at night? ii) If they call upon dark gods/patron demons/dark forces, then they are just evil clerics.

There is perhaps a third way: Mages take control of magic and channel it themselves, clerics channel powers to and from a patron entity.

iii) Necromancers would become patrons unto themselves -- they take control of magic, like a mage, and dispense it to lesser entities, directing the actions of minor spirits and familiar demons to use spells on others. These creatures would also bring energy to the necromancer from their own stores or that they collect from a target, which the necromancer can then use for his benefit.

Idea: most people assume a necromancer has a few self-healing abilties in the form life leeching or vampiric in nature -- regeneration might go here, too?

I was actually thinking this would best be handled by spreading the crafting skills out among classes where it made sense, then having general skill trees available without class restrictions. A dedicated class for this purpose seems contrived to me.

Bards would be a group-oriented class, like cleric with groupcasting and their protective/healing spells and warrior with their tanking abilities. In a group, the bard uses his skills with song and possibly dance to inspire allies to be their best, providing minor bonuses to stats, hitting, regen and possibly some special effects as well. Songs would consume movement as they perform. A INSTRUMENT otype and play instrument skill (available at 2nd level but staggered across the levels similar to parry and dodge as to when they can be improved) would take less movement than singing but the instrument would take up wield/held slots. The songs and effects will be fairly straightforward buffs and possibly some debuffs.

On his own, a bard would rely far less on his musical skills and more on his luck. The bard is charismatic and charming, and seemingly favored by the universe. I thought of an idea for a 1st level bard offensive ability:

gamble - this ability consumes movement (1d20+20?) each time it is activated. Basically, the bard tries a risky manuever in combat, adding +40 or 50 to his AC (which is bad in this game) while adding an amount equal to (bard level/2 + (charisma score -10)) to either his hitroll, damroll or attacks (chosen at random) for a number of rounds equal to some sort of level or charisma based equation. Basically, it's a sort of mini-berserk. There could be multipliers to the bonus for higher level bards (x2 at 21, x3 at 32 maybe?)

I proposed a luck skill to Dentin for bards a short while ago that runs along a similar vein. I'm going to think of more abilities like this for the future.